App Smart Extra: Organizing Business Cards

One app that does not scan business cards, but makes great use of the information in them, is Bento ($5 for Apple devices). The program helps users organize a multitude of areas, including projects, To Do items, events, recipes, teams and, yes, business contacts.

In general, Bento is most useful as a mobile companion to Bento 3, a $49 desktop program for the Mac, because it is far easier to type in a list of things to do on a computer keyboard than on a phone. On an iPad, though, that equation changes, since the screen makes project management much more eye-friendly, and typing isn’t so much of a chore.

Business contacts fit nicely in the mobile app, because the app imports names and information stored in your device’s Contacts list. Use the business-card scanning apps to fully populate that list, and you can syndicate those names through whatever projects you manage on Bento.

And since you can store pictures, video and audio clips along with each contact, your personal Rolodex is suddenly much more fun to thumb through.

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